Imported quirk for 2008: coming across as something like Lil’ Rushmore or Harry Potter and the First Blood –Garth Jennings’s (director of Hitchhiker’s Guide, one half of music video production duo Hammers & Tongs) Son of Rambow, an homage to the 80’s, camcorder creations, and childhood do-it-yourselfing.

Will, unable to make new friends and forbidden to watch TV or movies under the rules of his parents and their strict religious sect, is introduced to a bootlegged tape of Rambo: First Blood by troublemaker and soon-to-be best friend Carter. Forever changed by his first taste of popular culture, Will joins Carter to undertake their own home-grown production of a Stallone sequel. Their skyrocketing schoolyard popularity is inversely proportional to Will’s trouble at home as word of their picturemaking spreads. Scheduled release: May 2nd, 2008.

Related: Michel Gondry’s own raggedy VHS fantasy starring Mos Def and Jack Black –Be Kind Rewind is “about feel more than focus — and who cares about a storyline when you have Jerry and Mike’s re-imagined films, with their inventive camera tricks and dime-store magic, to fill the screen?” – Cinematical review, plus a round-up of impressions on the film from Sundance, via GreenCine.